


Drachenfutter

by kaeltale



Series: Half a Millennium of Savoir-faire [1]
Category: Wiedźmin | The Witcher (Video Game), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types, Wiedźmin | The Witcher Series - Andrzej Sapkowski
Genre: Chaos Theory, Enemies to Friends, Gen, Mild Bloodlust, POV First Person, POV: Khagmar, Past Torture, Philosophizing, Reformed Murder-bat meets Angsty Young Dragon, Violence Against Humans
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-25
Updated: 2018-04-25
Packaged: 2019-04-28 00:10:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,114
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14437215
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kaeltale/pseuds/kaeltale
Summary: “I know a monster when I see one,” I hissed. It was like looking into a mirror, were it even possible. The dragon’s eyes longed to see the world around him burn. He was drunk on the destruction that he was capable of bringing. It was helping him to forget.





	Drachenfutter

**Author's Note:**

> A huge thanks to [Dordean](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Dordean/pseuds/Dordean) and [a_sparrows_fall](http://archiveofourown.org/users/a_sparrows_fall/pseuds/a_sparrows_fall) for the beta-readings, and all the lovely advice and comments! You two are the best, and are both a constant source of inspiration and motivation. _(And the best at indulging me when I just really need to post something)_
> 
> I had fun trying out first person style, and it was good to take a break from my main project. This work is a bit of a spin-off of my other story [A Vampire, an Elf, and a Dragon Walk into a Bar](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12614564). Feel free to check it out, though it's not necessary to read one before the other (just adds some flavor).

It was mid-day, on a day like any other, in the human year of 997, that I met my first true pupil.

I’d walked no more than ten minutes from my home on the outskirts of the village of T'sova, in Zerrikania, when the canopy above me burst into flames. I admit my first reaction was excitement—it came from a part of me that turns my stomach in the recollection of it; the part of me who still wanted to tear down the world I’d been trapped in. I caught the smell of charred flesh and choking ash sifting through the jungle’s humidity, and I could recognize the scents of my neighbors under the blanket of heat. I could hear their short-lived cries for mercy.

Emotion twisted through me, and fueled my desperate call to arms as I rushed toward the chaos. The faces of my friends haunted my vision, and the sounds of their pain filled me with fear. When I reached the village walls, I realized my visions were all that was left of them. Their stone houses had become glowing ovens, equal parts flame and molten rock. Cloth, wood, and human remains had all turned to unrecognizable black silhouettes on the walls and earth.

I can say now that I am thankful they had swift deaths, in the very least—it’s a better fate than many I’ve met—but at the time I was losing the war with my nature. I wish I could record that it was rage that filled me, but my fangs were singing with anticipation. It was myself I feared most that day.

The glint of gold, and the resigned flap of leathery wings caught my attention at the heart of the massacre. In that moment I understood this was the wrath of a god, and only one such creature was worshiped in Zerrikania. I turned the corner and saw the demon laid out, contented at its work, like a great lion before its gory trophy. I could feel the waves of satiated vengeance seeping from it. My claws grew, my teeth sharpened, and my mouth watered at the sight of the beast. It was not the only monster there that day.

There was nothing left to for me jeopardize, no one left to protect, so I let my fury take me. It had been so long... I’d nearly forgotten—that _feeling_ ; adrenaline filling me like poison; aggression eating me from the inside; hatred mixing with the urge to kill. I wanted the dragon’s scaly hide to rip beneath my claws, and its fire to die in my mouth. I wanted to make him suffer for every life he’d taken. I wanted to make him suffer for the joy of it.

I lunged; a flash of fog and fangs who thought only of death.

The dragon lifted its pointy head in my direction. Its back arched and its tail flicked. My claws found the air as wings beat whirlwinds into my face.

When I looked up, fire rained down in sheets. It stuck to my skin, burning in a torrent of pain. I screamed until my legs gave out, and I regretted ever leaving Toussaint.

It's difficult to describe now, but I recall my mind spiraling back to Tesham Mutna. I was locked in my cage and death was all around me. The walls echoed agony, the humans wept, and my lungs were empty and torn. I couldn’t recognize my own voice among the chorus. I couldn't understand the difference. The screaming in my head seemed never to end, but the fire did.

Through my pain, I caught a glimpse of the dragon tilting its head at me. I writhed, my body raw against the soot, but this was hardly my undoing. Even as I squirmed, my skin regrew.

 _What are you?_ A voice asked in my head. I felt it raking through my thoughts, using the question to probe for answers.

 _Ah. I see,_ it concluded, abruptly.

I rolled on my back, naked yet whole in the ash, and a face moved into focus above me. The dragon looked like a young man. He was slight and serpentine, and crowned with golden curls that give his dark skin a luminous glow. I recognized his traditional Zerrikanian tiger-skin robes, pinned at the shoulder with three crow feathers, as a mark of his nobility. He looked nothing like a dragon, though that wasn't an odd thing. I looked nothing like a vampire.

“Khagmar,” he announced my name with a boastful curl to his lips, “you’re far from your home.”

Even now, I’m not sure if he meant that as an insult. I can't recall if I took it as one. It hurt, and it was true.

But he hardly had a right to it.

“And what should I call you, beast?” I spat. I was too angry to be clever. I should have been accustomed to madness, yet my body was shaking with it. Hate for him, hate for myself—it all blurred together when I saw his empty eyes and I knew they were like mine.

“Villentretenmerth,” the young dragon snorted. “I’m surprised you care. Was this your private vineyard, deary?”

I let my head drop to the side. There were bits of black bone poking out of the ash in front of me. A human femur. A child’s.

“They were my friends.”

He probed my mind again, peeking at the images of those he killed, but the fight had left me weak and miserable.

“You have no friends. They didn’t know you,” Villentretenmerth said.

“They didn’t know you, either,” I sneered.

The villagers had worshiped his kind. They'd set alters, made sacrifices, and devoted their lives to serving the dragons—lives with a value far greater than my own, for theirs were so fragile, and their time so precious.

My friends had deserved better gods.

“You think so?” The dragon perched beside me and started picking at my hair. I wanted to slash open his throat.

Before my claws could find him, his body was towering over me once again. His hand was a talon lodged into my forehead, and his neck curved up far beyond my reach.

 _Your flesh regenerates quickly,_  his voice pierced my thoughts. _How long would it take you to rebuild if I were to damage your mind?_

I realized there was nothing I could do that he would not see before it happened.

“I know a monster when I see one,” I hissed. It was like looking into a mirror, were it even possible. The dragon’s eyes longed to see the world around him burn. He was drunk on the destruction he was capable of bringing. It was helping him to forget. “What did these people ever do to you?”

The young man had his hands tangled in my hair again, shifting forms so quickly that I felt either man or dragon could have been a mirage to the other. He balled his fist and pulled me up by my roots, but I could not yet feel my body.

I spat in his face. He didn’t see it coming, or simply didn’t care.

“You’re nothing. Just a beast. A slave to your pain, and the people that you’ve killed will only bring you more of it.” I knew it as a fact. I was spitting at myself. “It all balances out eventually, when you’ve lived long enough.”

He then punched my jaw, and it cracked loudly. I could feel that.

“What do you know, vampire?” He threw me back into the dirt.

I felt his mind pull away. He didn’t want to hear what I knew back then. He didn’t want to see what I’d seen. The flame in his eyes flickered out.

In the next instant, he leapt back into the sky in a flurry of gold, and I knew it would not be the last time I saw him.

* * *

Months passed, and I’d moved on to the desert steppes of the town of Yrgalé. It was not the first time I’d had to relocate my life, and it wouldn't be the last.

Stories of the angry god continued to spread through the countryside, and the humans in my new town poured out offerings at the dragon alters in hopes of being spared. The matriarchs sought council from other dragons who lived near the cities. It wasn't often, in those enlightened times, that one of the gods turned on them.

I began to teach again, as I had for the people of T'sova. To the children I taught the Nilfgaardian tongue, and the youth learned math and writing. To those who wished to join me, I led discussions of music or philosophy or architecture; all the knowledge I had accumulated in my long life. I was a curiosity to them—a man who wanted to teach rather than engage in the traditional roles of the farmer or laborer—excused in my strange pursuits for being a foreigner. The matriarchs smiled and encouraged my teachings. They didn’t know what I am, but they knew I came from far away, and that I brought wisdom with me.

And I was happy to teach them. I found peace once more. My long life still had value in the knowledge I shared with others. It was a necessary debt for the lessons humans had given me.

As I lectured on ethical theory outside my home, a pair of empty eyes caught me. The face they belonged to was different. His brows were more pronounced, his cheekbones were a sharper angle, but still snake-like, and his hair was still curly, but dark and matched with a thin beard. He wore a simple woolen kaftan with three black feathers pushed into the breast. It was him.

I turned the direction of my lecture; the problems of hard determinism would only entrench the dragon in his ways. He thought he knew how the world worked, but what he needed was to be shaken up.

“... There is another theory that draws from both the patterns of life, and the nature of life to be unpredictable. Like the weather.” I pointed up at the rain clouds looming over the distant mountains to illustrate. “We can never know the ways a drop of rain halfway across the world has changed our landscape, and we can’t predict when and where that rain will fall, but that drop of rain ripples out as a part of everything else.

“It feeds the cacti, which feed the birds, which feed the tigers, and so on.

“If we take that drop of rain away, perhaps the cactus dies, the tiger has nothing left to eat, and it hunts in our town instead of in the wilds. The world changes.”

“Old man,” the dragon said, interrupting my oration. “You’re speaking nonsense. You really think it matters if a single drop of rain were to be lost from the world?”

I didn’t feel him in my mind yet. There was a chance I’d been mistaken about his identity.

“Not entirely," I said. "It’s more that, in knowing all the collective and seemingly chaotic events of the world, you could accurately predict any future moment. But as that is not a possibility, we are only able to make order of all these details in retrospect. Everything is chaotic, at a glance, but chaos is inherently ordered. This paradox creates choice.”

I looked him over once more, and added, “Which is why our choices matter. It’s why knowledge matters. To understand that you can never know the full effect you’ll have on the world until your decisions have already been made, and to then make those decisions carefully.”

His eyes grew wide, and the emptiness in them churned. I decided to make my meaning clear.

“To use an extreme example; if you were to end a life, you not only destroy what that person was, but everything that person will do. The death ripples out, effecting the entire world.”

The dragon's brows clashed together. He was bitter with my answer.

“And what of my own life?” he asked, outraged. “What about a life that has been taken from me? If a drop of rain changes the entire world, how can anyone be held responsible for their decisions? It’s all cause and effect.”

“You see it that way because you are still a victim of the chaos,” I told him, putting on my best performance of a wise old man, “and not taking responsibility for the order that comes after it.

“The knowledge of choice changes the way we choose; it's part of the formula of cause and effect. It’s why I give lectures on ethics. I’ve lived long enough to see how patterns can change over time.”

He was angry then. His cheeks turned a burnt mahogany with the blood coursing through him. He didn’t like to be told that he was young and ignorant. I hadn’t liked it either, in my day—because it was true.

“But… this will be a discussion for another time.” I dismissed the class, and they dispersed with soft mumbling; the conversation was too dangerous for the others.

“Young man, would you join me for tea?”

* * *

We didn’t speak as he sat cross-legged at my table. The hard floor had never bothered me, but I kept some pillows there for my guests, and he used all of them to find a comfortable position; like a dragon sitting on his hoard. I could tell he was accustomed to finer things.

I served a tray of kanafeh and spiced chai before sitting across from him. He took up the stringy treat, and the stiffness fell from his features at the sweetness of it.

“I didn’t expect to see you again, Villentretenmerth.”

His eyes narrowed, but he had not yet read my thoughts. I stood by my assumption: he didn’t want to see any more of my memories. But he couldn’t unsee them, either.

“You weren’t easy to find, vampire.” He smiled brightly, leaning in on his elbow.

It was strange to see him being so friendly, though I imagined the passage of time had painted me differently in his eyes as well.

“I find it ironic, you know,” he casually waved the earthenware cup, speaking with a mouthful of cheese, “you preaching morality to them. And to me. We both know you would have liked to see me dead in T’sova.”

I smiled. Perhaps friendly wasn’t accurate, but it was still lighthearted as conversations go between near-immortals.

“I've made many mistakes, and I'll likely make more.” I leaned back with a shrug. “I never claimed to be perfect, but I do try to learn.”

“What’s the point? Trying to play nice after all you’ve done.” He munched on another large piece of kanafeh, and I marveled at his ability to keep food in his mouth as he spoke. “I’ve seen the blood on your hands, vampire. It's simply in your nature.”

I made certain to display my fangs when my smile broadened. Two could play this game of verbal fencing, and I’d had many more years to tame my beast.

“What was your point in slaughtering a village of innocents?”

His guarded nonchalance fell, and he twisted his face into a dragon-like sneer.

“The humans deserve it. All of them.”

I saw the venom in his eyes, and in turn I steadied myself as the portrait of tranquility. My chai was the perfect temperature to appreciate the way the cloves balanced out the cinnamon, and the peppercorns brought the bite out of the ginger root. I let him stew in his anger while I took in slow sips of the vibrant bouquet of flavors.

Before he opened his mouth to speak again, I gave him my response, “This is where we find our differences; both now and in my past. I never saw humans as deserving of death, but their deaths were an unfortunate side effect of my addiction.

“Our similarity, however, is in this: we were both running from something. I was drinking my life away, and I recognize that moral indifference in you.” I took another sip of tea while his brows tied knots into each other. He was not only angry, I understood, but conflicted.

“So I ask again, why did you kill them?”

Villentretenmerth slammed his fists into the stone table, tearing the skin of his knuckles, then pointed a finger at me.

“I didn’t come here to be judged by you!” His lips pulled back as he snarled.

I continued to sip my tea when he jumped from the table and started pacing the room. It was a truly unremarkable display. He was young, and he was trying his best to listen, but he wasn't able to. At least he was being civil about it.

“Then why did you come?” I put aside my cup, not expecting a real answer, but hopeful that I might lead him to question himself.

“To tell you that you’re wrong, and you’re a hypocrite, and a vagrant son of a whore!”

Oh! There was certainly an answer there, buried far beneath his fury.

The dragon waved his hands as he roared, “No humans will ever truly care for you, so I don’t see the point in pretending to like them!”

He wanted to understand. He wanted to learn. He didn’t know who else to ask for absolution. He didn’t even know that’s what he wanted, yet.

“It’s not a pretense,” I told him, honestly. “I admire their strength.”

“You’re insane, old man. You’re an old fool, and I don’t know why I waste my breath on you!”

He pulled back the hide flap that served as my door and disappeared into the midday sun.

* * *

It was another few months before he found me again. The stories of the angry god had died down, but the town’s alters were still full of placations. I was stretching my wings under the full moon, when a dash of gold swept past me in the sky.

He had to search my mind to be sure it was even me.

 _You look repulsive._ His voice, despite the jab, was harmless.

I whirled around him, feeling the power of my own wing beats. Flight was one of the few joys I'd still indulge in. The dunes twinkled like an ocean trapped in time, breathing up warm currents that made gliding effortless. It was not Toussaint, but Zerrikania had become as much a home to me as any place in this alien world, and the glow of the moonlit sand reminded me of the phosphorescent towers of my true home.

 _Quite a poetic heart for a monster._ The dragon glided lower, leading back to Yrgalé, and I reluctantly followed him.

With the town in sight, he did something that truly shocked me; replacing his bright scaly image with one frightening to behold. His metallic wings turned dull and thin, his shiny hide grew in dark fur, triangular ears appeared on his head, and his bulk halved from his original horse-sized proportions. He was mimicking my species perfectly.

 _I wouldn’t want to draw attention to myself,_ he explained.

We landed silent and stealthy behind my house, and I realized I was staring at him. It had been so long since I’d seen another of my kind, I'd forgotten what we looked like.

There _was_ something repulsive in the stubby, wrinkled nose, and split upper lip that hinted at the jagged maw behind it. Not because it was unnatural to me, but because it was familiar. It reminded me of the blood-brother who once flew beside me, and my stomach twisted.

“Who’s Coram?” the young dragon asked. His crown of golden curls dripped with silver under the moon, and I wished that he would use a different human form.

“Another vampire,” I told him. “Another false god.”

I didn’t see when the change came, but his hair went black again. It was a kindness on his part, and I thanked him for it in my thoughts.

“Do you have anymore kanafeh?” His eyes weren’t so empty anymore as they pleaded with me.

I held open the flap to my home, and he walked through with a humility I hadn't thought him capable of. His eyes darted around the room while I set up a tray of the syrup-soaked pastries. He did not pile up the pillows as he sat at my table. The lines of his face creased, and his fists pushed deep into his thighs, forming sullen angles with his knees and elbows.

He didn’t move when I set the tray down in front of us.

“You can take as much as you like,” I encouraged him, and he jumped as though I’d shouted.

“How can you be so kind to me when I’ve killed people you cared for?” He was staring down at the kanafeh, steeping in his shame.

He’d realized it, finally, I thought. The lives he had taken were not meaningless things. They had been mothers, daughters, sons, husbands, and friends. People—not just humans. Their lives rippled out, and the removal of them had changed the world.

“I think you already know the answer.”

“Tell me.”

He could have forced his way into my thoughts, but he didn’t. He wanted to hear the truth; for someone else to make real the things he couldn’t say.

“There’s nothing I can do to you that will change what you have done,” I noticed how his jaw clenched, and I feared he might cry, “but I can change what you will do.”

At this, he looked at me, and I saw the effort it took him to hold himself together. He didn’t want to cry. He likely knew how difficult it was for me to handle, as he’d seen it in my memories.

“Wouldn’t it be easier to catch me off guard while I slept one day, and end me? Or to not care at all? Why do you even care what happens to me?”

“I care because… I’ve seen enough suffering.” I watched him carefully as I spoke, and he didn’t look away. “You will live for many centuries, and your choices will impact countless lives, as mine have; for good and ill. Despite their frailties, humans face the world with courage. The virtues that they possess are only possible because they are human.”

“What about the virtues of dragons?” he asked, and there was a flicker of anger in him still. “Humans killed my friend, Tisvesseneth. She lived in Kovir, where dragons aren’t gods." His eyes were a plea for answers inside the flames. “Why did they do it?” 

“Why did you kill the people of T’sova?”

He vaulted from his seat and started pacing again.

“I was angry. I was hurt. When I heard the news, I didn’t know what to do with it.”

“Dragons have a long history of hating humans, and dominating them—even in Zerrikania.” He knew these things, but it was important he remembered them now. “Here, there is the good fortune that golden dragons can speak and be reasoned with, but in the west there is only fear.”

He frowned. “So it was revenge that killed Tisvesseneth? Because humans fear dragons?”

I shook my head. “Eventually, fear turns to courage. Humans find ways to conquer fear because they must. Because of their frailty, they are driven to become stronger than us." I adjusted a pillow, inviting him to sit.

“But now you’re afraid, Villentretenmerth. For the first time, you know what it feels like to be human; powerless to prevent death. This pain brings an important lesson, and it gives you a choice.”

He stopped in his tracks and watched me. He was listening this time.

“If you choose to see only the chaos, yes, more humans will die, and more humans will have reasons to hunt dragons. If you choose order, you look for ways learn from fear, recognize its patterns, and aim for a different future.”

“What should I do?” His eyes were raw and wet and confused.

I stood, pulling a ring off my finger; one of the last pieces I had of my home world. I believed in him, and in what he was capable of. I held the gift out to him in an open palm.

He saw the meaning of it in my mind; a meaning I’d ascribed to the ring in my darkest moments—the twin serpents on the dalvinite band would remind him of the choice he must make: Chaos or Order.

“Better,” I told him, and I smiled because I knew he would.


End file.
